Nielsen and Simulmedia partnered to develop a measurement solution for unmeasured cable network TV audiences. Joint research by the companies will seek to capture the sizable audience activity “that goes unmeasured today on niche cable networks to enable these networks to sell advertising based on reliable, qualified ratings systems,” Nielsen said Tuesday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1x7sHwU). The research was accumulated through the Nielsen People Meter panel and Simulmedia’s set-top box viewing data representing 50 million viewers, it said.
ICANN opened a public comment period on Neustar’s request (http://bit.ly/1v0d86Z) to allow the registration for all country and territory names for its .neustar domain, said an ICANN news release Friday (http://bit.ly/1Dtsx4I). “Registry Operators are required to reserve the country and territory names, but may propose their release, subject to review by the Governmental Advisory Committee and approval by ICANN.” Comments are due Oct. 10, replies Nov. 8.
The iPhone 6 may not be as “durable” as its predecessors, said uBreakiFix, a CE repair company that subjected the new phone to a series of drop tests. The same company recently did drop tests on the durability of sapphire cover glass on the growing speculation that the iPhone 6 would contain it, which it ultimately did not. The iPhone 6 has what Apple calls “ion-strengthened glass” on the front touch surface, uBreakiFix said. Whether that makes the glass on the iPhone 6 stronger than that of its predecessors “has been the source of much debate” since Apple unveiled the phone on Sept. 9, it said. To put the debate to rest, uBreakiFix used a steel-ball drop test to determine the phone’s impact resistance compared with earlier iPhones, it said. “In this test, the phone was placed on the ground, face up, while a steel ball was dropped on the display,” it said. “After establishing a baseline with the iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, and Samsung Galaxy S4, uBreakiFix tested the iPhone 6.” The results “were surprising,” as the iPhone 6 broke at a drop height of 3 feet, while the iPhone 4 and 5 withstood drop heights well over 4 feet, and the Galaxy S4 withstood a drop height of 4 feet, it said. “One notable display feature on the iPhone 6 is the rounded edges. This creates a glass surface that protrudes out from the phone chassis, meaning a face down drop impacts glass first. This fact combined with the result of our steel ball drop test lead us to believe that the iPhone 6 may be more prone to damage than prior Apple devices.” The company’s key takeaway: “Though we are impressed by the style of the iPhone 6, we would recommend a protective case with a front facing lip to protect the glass on the phone.” Representatives of uBreakiFix didn’t immediately comment on the weight of the steel ball used in the drop tests.
"Europe needs to reform and forge a true digital single market,” said Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt in an essay published on the European Commission’s (EC) website (http://bit.ly/1ylRKhy). If Europe establishes a digital single market, “the macroeconomic benefits would be enormous,” he said. Citing European Policy Centre research (http://www.epc.eu/dsm/1/), Schmidt said a single digital market in Europe could raise EU GDP by at least 4 percent by 2020, generating 250 billion euros of “additional growth.” But European companies have lagged in technology adoption, partially due to hesitancy about obtaining individual licenses to operate in each of the 28 EU countries, he said. “If regulatory barriers are removed, startups could directly access half a billion European consumers, a market that’s larger than the US, where technology companies have the ability to achieve scale before they expand internationally.” The essay was posted on the site for Neelie Kroes, a European commissioner and head of the EC’s digital agenda. Kroes has made a single digital market a top priority of her tenure, but Google has faced ongoing pushback from EU antitrust officials (WID Sept 22 p2).
The U.S. machine-to-machine (M2M) market is 10 percent of all mobile connections in the automotive and utilities sectors, a GSMA report said (http://bit.ly/1sV4bsb). The U.S. had 35 million connections, or 19 percent of all global M2M connections at the end of 2013, GSMA said in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1v04KEw). The U.S. is expected to reach 41 million connections this year, it said, driven by advances in the automotive, utilities, and oil and gas sectors. The U.S. M2M market is still in its early stages of development and needs to address significant challenges to fulfill its potential, GSMA said. The market lacks standardization, and there is little cooperation between the private and public sectors in many parts of the M2M economy, it said.
Iridium said it will provide global emergency tracking technology to the aviation community for free. Through its subsidiary Aireon, Iridium will offer the Aireon aircraft locating and emergency response tracking (ALERT) service, letting rescue agencies request the location and last flight track of aircraft flying in airspace currently without surveillance, Aireon said in a news release Sunday (http://bit.ly/1mCF9RX). The service will work with aircraft equipped with 1090 MHz automatic dependent surveillance broadcast (ADS-B) receivers, it said. ALERT will be available after the Aireon air traffic monitoring system is fully deployed, it said. Iridium plans to launch the first payloads in that system next year.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) financial data collection practices are consistent with the Federal Information Security Management Act, but the agency could implement increased documentation and additional measures to reduce the risk of improper data collection or release, the GAO said in a report released Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1B28Wo9). “CFPB lacks written procedures and comprehensive documentation for a number of processes, including data intake and information security risk assessments,” the GAO said. “CFPB has not yet fully implemented a number of privacy control steps and information security practices, which could hamper the agency’s ability to identify and monitor privacy risks and protect consumer financial data.” The CFPB concurred with GAO’s recommendations and has an outline in place to comply with its recommendations, the GAO said.
AT&T’s comment in the Communications Act Section 706 notice of inquiry that wholesale obligations could deter it from making broadband investments is an “absurd argument,” Comptel said in a reply filed in docket 14-126 at Friday’s deadline. AT&T argued in Sept. 4 comments (http://bit.ly/1Af6UAO) that legacy regulations, like the wholesale obligations in sections 251 and 271, “may require carriers to maintain legacy TDM-based networks even after their IP networks are in place.” The claim that the obligations deter broadband investment “has never been proven,” Comptel said. The commission found in the IP transitions order that in the 15 years before deregulation in 2001, “the industry experienced ‘a torrent of new investment deployed over 200,000 miles of trenches and approximately 18 million miles of fiber -- enough fiber to circle the equator 750 times,'” Comptel said. AT&T’s claim of being required to maintain two networks “is nonsense,” Comptel said, because “the same physical infrastructure that has supported TDM-based services over the decades supports IP-based services.” The commission failed to provide “adequate support” for its proposal to increase the broadband download speed threshold to 10 Mbps, AT&T said in its reply made available Monday. The proposed increase “is not based on a reasonable analysis of how customers’ actually use broadband services,” said AT&T, which also criticized Public Knowledge and Netflix’s backing of a 25 Mbps benchmark. Public Knowledge’s comments were “based on a hypothetical average household that watches three HD movies simultaneously while using other basic device and online services,” while Netflix’s was “based on streaming super and ultra HD content,” AT&T said. There is no evidence “latency prevents consumers from using the applications listed in section 706, and thus there is no basis for the Commission to include it in evaluating broadband,” AT&T said. Replies filed Friday hadn’t been posted on the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System by our deadline. But major wireline players which filed initial comments -- including Fiber to the Home Council Americas, NCTA, Netflix, NTCA, Public Knowledge, TechFreedom and USTelecom -- told us they did not file replies. Some industry observers said the absence of filings in a proceeding that asked questions on topics such as increasing the broadband speed benchmark (WID Aug 6 p7). There’s a sense that the commission intends to move ahead regardless of the comments, said TechFreedom President Berin Szoka, a view shared by some others. That telecom attorneys are “completely overwhelmed by the absurdly intense series of deadlines the Commission has imposed” played a role, Szoka and others said. Spokespeople and attorneys for the groups that did not file said a sense the commission plans to move ahead with its proposal, including raising the broadband speed benchmark, was not a factor. They were too busy meeting a spate of deadlines on such other proceedings as on net neutrality and E-rate modernization, and felt their initial comments expressed their viewpoint, the sources said.
Though details “are not yet clear” for President Barack Obama’s forthcoming executive order on privacy concerns about commercial drones, it’s expected to “task” the NTIA with convening a multistakeholder process to develop privacy guidelines, “likely either in the form of best practices or a voluntary code of conduct,” said Wiley Rein lawyers Kathleen Kirby and Ari Meltzer in a blog post Friday (http://bit.ly/1poKN4V). “Best practices generally are not enforceable,” they said. “A voluntary code of conduct, however, is legally enforceable against companies that affirmatively commit to follow it. While the decision to adopt a code of conduct is voluntary, a public pledge to follow the code generally would amount to a representation enforceable by the FTC under its consumer protection authority.” There are incentives to adopting voluntary codes of conduct, as NTIA has done in its previous proceedings, they said. “Companies build consumer trust by engaging with consumers and other stakeholders in multi-stakeholder processes and by adopting privacy codes of conduct developed during those discussions,” they said. “Enforceable codes of conduct provide the public clear, understandable baseline protections and offer businesses greater certainty about how agreed upon privacy principles apply to them. Indeed, in any enforcement action based on conduct covered by a code, the FTC likely would consider a company’s adherence to such a code favorably. In the absence of a generally agreed upon code of conduct, the FTC could enforce privacy guidelines on a case-by-case basis, with less predictability and thus greater risk for businesses."
Communications services company WPP is investing $25 million in ad tech provider AppNexus, it said in a Monday news release (http://bit.ly/1C5YoXv). The investment includes its ad server platform, WPP said, and “continues WPP’s strategy of investing in fast-growing sectors such as ad technology and programmatic media buying.” The company said the “AppNexus’ platform allows real time buying and selling of digital advertising for marketers, publishers and content providers and media investment management companies."